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Top 10 Mame design tricks that we don't see enough of.
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paigeoliver:
Ok, after the success of the Top 10 Mistakes thread I thought we might do something positive as well. So here we go with the Top 10 design tricks that we don't see enough of. And this time instead of just coming up with all of them myself I am going to present one that I like and then let other posters present ones they like.

I will be editing worthy submissions into the top 10 as I receive them, and it is certainly possible for a new suggestion to bump an old one.


The List

#1. 4-way, 8-way side by side. I almost never see this but it is incredibly functional and much more comfortable to use than sticking a dedicated 4-way off in some strange place on the panel. You see you can install a 4-way stick and an 8-way stick with the bases touching each other, both using the same button bank. The sticks don't get in the way of each other as long as the 8-way is taller and the 4-way is located to the left of the 8-Way.

Here is a diagram of what I am talking about. I have tested this setup extensively and found it to be more comfortable in gameplay to the 4-way off in wonderland approach.


#2. Putting your arcade computer into standby mode instead of shutting down.

Who needs to disguise windows when you can just leave your frontend running all the time. My setup with mamewah works great. When I am done playing I hit what is normally the pause button when I am in mame, but it's the standby button when in Mamewah, my computer instantly goes to sleep, my monitor turns off thanks to a smartstrip, the harddrive stops spinning, the CPU fan stops, the power supply fan stops, the computer is completely silent, only using enough power to keep the contents of RAM intact. When I want to play again I hit the power button and bam, the computer springs back to life and I am instantly back in my frontend. No shutting down, no booting. Initially when I had mamewah itself handling the standby process I had some trouble with my joysticks not responding when the computer woke back up but I just made a autoHotKey script that initiates the standby and bound a button in mamewah to run the script and now it wakes up with no problems. Greatest thing ever.

#3. Quality instruction graphics built into the theme of the cabinet

Knievel uses them well
Psychotech has some nice cards too

Whether we want to believe it or not, these MAME machines we build can be very confusing to the rookies out there.
FrizzleFried:
That is pretty damn spiffy if I do say so myself...I never thought of that!  So simple...yet so elegant!  Bravo! 
ahofle:
I always thought that was a good idea too.  I first saw it here (well I assumed that the stick on the left is 4 way anyway):
http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/14.html
"You'll notice that these inbred freaks apparenly have 2 left hands, as they have 2 sticks on the left side of the box."
 :laugh2:

FrizzleFried:
I'd HAVE to do it with an 8-way bat handle and a TRUE 4-way ball handle...

paigeoliver:
I usually did it with an 8-way Wico and a 4-way Reunion joystick myself.


--- Quote from: FrizzleFried on March 13, 2007, 11:55:12 pm ---I'd HAVE to do it with an 8-way bat handle and a TRUE 4-way ball handle...



--- End quote ---
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